Kodak had weapons-grade uranium

For three decades, camera company Kodak had a secret deep inside an underground lab in its Rochester, New York research facility: weapons-grade uranium and a californium neutron flux multiplier. (No, not a flux capacitor.) They stored 3.5 pounds of the uranium, apparently not enough to make a nuclear weapon but still not something you'd expect to find in most corporate research labs. The Union of Concerned Scientists are, well, concerned. From CNN:

Kodak turned the material over to the government in 2007, under heavy security. But for more than 30 years, the company had a device called a californium neutron flux multiplier, or CFX, in a specially built labyrinth beneath Building 82 at its labs near Rochester, New York. The device was about the size of a refrigerator.
It was not a reactor, but rather a hunk of metal emitting radiation. Its purpose was to create a beam of neutrons to use for scanning and testing other materials. The device's primary source of neutron radiation was the radioactive element californium, but the stream of neutrons produced by the californium was multiplied by passing it through a lattice of highly enriched uranium U-235, whose nuclear fission released additional neutrons.

According to a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Kodak's uranium was highly enriched -- to a level approaching 93.4%. That is the type of weapons-grade material that U.S. government agencies are trying to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on…

Kodak says it never intended to hide the CFX, and it was licensed by both state and federal officials. But the fact that the company was handling highly enriched uranium was never widely publicized.

Because it demonstrates that dangerous materials can in fact be handled safely and without incident. Kodak assumedly got some useful research out of having it available and there’s nothing wrong with that. That they held on to it for 3 decades without issue is a pretty good compliment to the company.

Well, that’s what I got out of it anyway. I assume most people will take something else entirely out of the news.

Well, let’s speculate what would happen IF they hadn’t turned over the U-235 to the Feds in 1988, & instead made a small nuclear device when they started to go bankrupt. Then used the nuke to refuse to allow creditors to seize their assets. Can you say too Mad Scientist to fail?

How many other private companies have significant amounts of weapons-grade uranium? I’m sure that the bad guys will now try to find out, so I hope their security is good. You can’t count on ignorance as a security measure.

U-235 would never make an effective dirty bomb. In fact, dirty bombs in general are extremely unlikely to cause real damage beyond their explosive force anyway. It’s extremely difficult to expose someone to enough radiation to be immediately dangerous that way, and then the radioactive materials are too easy to clean up.

Well, according to the story, it was “highly enriched U-235,” and “weapons grade.” I understand that uranium != weapons grade uranium, but unless you have some information that is not in the linked story, I think your comment is misplaced.

According to a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Kodak’s uranium was highly enriched — to a level approaching 93.4%. That is the type of weapons-grade material that U.S. government agencies are trying to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on.

The MTR type of fuel plate used in the CFX was initially an alloy of 80% aluminum and 20% uranium (93% U235). However in the 1950s the composition was switched, for non-proliferation reasons, to 55% aluminum / 45% uranium (20% U235). Kodak’s CFX dates from 1974. 20% U235 is the low-end of the definition of “highly enriched uranium”, and is not “weapons grade”. CNN heard the NRC spokesman say “highly enriched uranium”, looked up the definition, and assumed this material was at the high end of the range. It wasn’t. CNN got it wrong.

So actually more like 93.3999996, amirite? Hey CNN copy editor – “approaching” has 11 characters in it.. if the “four-tenths” is not precise enough, why not drop the wiggle word and use the column inches to print all the sig-figs that your intrepid reporter has presumably provided?

Kodak had access to weapons-grade uranium? And yet they still had to go into bankruptcy protection?

That, to my mind, argues a lack of imagination on the part of their executives. I don’t know what they teach kids at business school these days, but clearly they’re not comfortable thinking outside the box to create novel income-generating strategies.

These “Big companies have interesting stuff” scare-mongering stories perplex me. Do people really not know that large companies, especially those with big government contracts, have these sorts of things.

I used to walk by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory every day while it was under construction by Kodak. Should I tell people that I strolled mere inches away from a Space Based Potential Death Ray Machine now?

Heck, a lot of small organizations have this kind of equipment – universities in particular. I’m wondering when Boing Boing will post “BREAKING: REED UNIVERSITY HAS A TRIGA REACTOR IN A CITY.” Sure, they give tours of it, but that’s probably a conspiracy to irradiate the public.

Kodak needed this neutron source to develop and test neutron-sensitive film (used for medical, physics and engineering/ non-destructive part testing purposes) and solid-state detectors, some of which were used on non-proliferation /test-ban monitoring satellites. This neutron source had a strongly positive effect on the world. The ignorant, scare-mongering tone of this article is reprehensible.

I think it that could’ve been the awesomest press conference in history.

Kokak PR Drone: “I am sorry to announce that effectively today, Eastman Kodak is filing for bankruptcy protection. Oh, and in unrelated news, we’d also like it to be known that we are in possession of 3.5lbs of weapons grade uranium. That is all.”